Eris Morn's ship was a muscular, prickly system-hopper, made of green-black iron lined with spinmetal around the nacelles. Amanda Holliday squinted against the sun at the small guns, trying to see into the deep shadows as the sliver of sun visible behind the Traveler started to set.
A sound behind her made her jump, and the Titan who had begun to stomp up the stairs turned the single eye of his helmet toward her.
"Excuse me," Amanda said. The wind pressed her shawl against her mouth for a moment, and by the time she had pulled it away, the Titan was conferring with Eris.
The cables under Eris' ship made it look disused and tethered, but Amanda knew that the mysterious Guardian flew in that ship to the Tower every day and left every night.
The Titan walked away empty-handed, probably with a mission. Guardians were always on the go, Amanda knew. That was why her job was so important, and the Tower staffers so essential. They put a roof over the heads of the people trying to put a roof over the heads of all of humanity.
Amanda blinked as she saw Eris look at her. It was a small movement, and would have been much less obvious if the green sphere of Light Eris held didn't spit and spill its green glow up onto her face.
Abashed, Amanda turned and left. She had inventory to do, after all, parts to stack, favors to do for more people than she could count on one hand. She would see through the hangar doors when Eris left for the night.
Music hit over and over like gunfire. Guitars synched up with Amanda's heartbeat and threatened to snatch her over to the dusty radio by the bar, to make a choice and find another staffer and roll glimmer across the tables in exchange for watery drinks from rooftop City breweries.
In a corner, an long-haired Awoken Hunter kissed a human Titan's armored hand. At the nearer table, an alert, almost jumpy-looking Exo shared a table with a youthful Warlock, Vanguard Ikora Rey, and a rock that gave Amanda a headache to observe. Amanda recognized the two Guardians as frequent passers-by, and paused beside the Warlock.
"How's your ship?"
"It does its job," she replied. "It helped me find this."
"What is it?" Amanda glanced at the stone, and then at an empty chair. The Vanguard didn't move from her straight-backed pose, her hands cupped around her drink, but the Warlock pulled out the empty chair. She introduced herself as Kass, and the Exo as Yarrow-15.
"Thank you," Amanda said. The artifact on the table had already drawn her eyes, and she leaned toward it.
"We don't know," Kass said. "Found it beside one of the Swords of Crota."
"It resonates," Amanda said. "It could be an energy source."
"Its patterns change, almost like language," Kass said. "We asked Eris about it, but she only talks in brief or in rhyme, except to the Vanguard."
"I cannot force her," Rey said. She looked evenly back and forth between the three of them. Sitting this close, Amanda noticed how tall the Vanguard was. "I wanted to offer my own services of communication, though. Guardians from all times live here. You all know this."
Kass and Yarrow nodded.
"Someone will know." She waved her hand, sinuous and nonspecific, and smiled. "Live and let live."
"Unless we shoot it," Kass said.
"Unless we shoot it. Don't shoot the artifact, Warlock," Rey said kindly. "Not when there are this many people around."
"I saw Eris yesterday," Amanda said. "She doesn't look happy."
"It's difficult to tell," Kass said.
"She has seen many things," Ikora Rey said. "They make her...different."
"I can tell by her ship," Amanda said, just as Kass was speaking too.
"But she'll talk to you," the Warlock said, gesturing with one armored, banded arm before touching her fingers to the lip of her mug. "She doesn't mind talking to support." Amanda almost expected Rey to be insulted, but among the gregarious, alpha-personality Guardians, small disagreements did not seem to change the background peace. It was only after larger insults that people began to forget they were part of an endangered species.
"I'll give it a good try," Amanda said.
She ordered a drink, and told the Guardians what machinery she would hook the rock up to if it was up to her, and compared theories about void energy and how many dimensions the artifact had until their cups were empty and the couple in the corner had gone home, a posse of Hunters quietly taking their place.
Amanda hadn't expected to find Eris so quickly. Blue midnight had fallen over the Tower. Emergency lights lined the hallways. A single Frame swept the dust from the floor. They were only a few hallways from the hangar, and Amanda could hear a ship coming in - something atmospheric, from the sound of it. Her assistant was on call tonight for both repairs and docking, but Amanda would probably look in on the ship on the way to her apartment anyway. She was awake now, running on a second wind which, she imagined, felt something like the Light. In the morning, she needed to order a NLS drive generator and reason with a man who thought she had sold him a faulty part.
Just outside, Eris slumped over toward the railing, but had barely touched it with her fingers when she straightened up again, and cushioned her ball of Light against her chest plate as if it were a baby.
"You're up late," Amanda said, not thinking too hard about it. It was the kind of friendly, straightforward greeting she would give any Guardian, and one that she thought a human would appreciate most because of its directness. "How's your ship?"
"It is fine. I saw your assistant earlier, in fact."
"She's good," Amanda said.
"I know your face but not your name," Eris said.
"Holliday. It's good to see you settling in, after Crota."
"Yes. Ikora Rey has been kind to me."
"I think the Guardians really respect you, even if they're sometimes scared to admit it."
"I understand their search for knowledge, but I also understand their pity." Eris turned slightly toward Amanda. "Crota was defeated. I am no longer a sole survivor. Now I am other things, but there will always be a gap in my life as a warrior."
"A lot of Guardians are like that, I think," Amanda said, picking up on Eris' unusually wordy tone. "Someone who looks older might have been revived by their ghost years after a person who looks young. It's funny..."
Eris tipped her head, and Amanda wasn't sure whether the idea of funny would penetrate her veil. "The Tower support notice it more than the Guardians do. We see the different traditions and misunderstandings. Guardians accept them."
"And where are you from?"
Amanda hesitated, not sure what to say, before summoning the same bravado that helped her keep the Tower's warriors flying. "Earth. About thirty years ago. I know Golden Age machinery in and out, but I never lived with it in its prime."
"I was reborn about twenty years ago. Since then...the Tower, and the pit."
And the reverent pity, Amanda thought.
"To each their own goal, to live and keep living," Eris intoned.
Amanda nodded, both in befuddled agreement and in acknowledgement of Eris' sing-song tone of which the Guardians had spoken, as well as her conscious or unconscious echo of the Vanguard's advice. "If you need any help..." She looked at the black ichor on Eris' face, the stripes like oil or makeup falling down her cheeks. "I'm here."
"Thank you. For your aid and Ikora's." That Light - not like a baby. Like entrails, and Eris was the dying woman trying to hold them in.
Amanda left with the certainty that she had done only a little for Eris, but that it had been enough: that the last survivor of Crota's first personal massacre was a strange machine that would not be so much fixed as coaxed into a shape that enabled more communication.
In the morning, she did her work and kept to her schedule, purchasing fleeced spinmetal and pulling out from rusted drawers some of the machinery that she thought might help Ikora Rey and Kass. Then she pocketed her gift to Eris and took it across the promenade.
Guardians gathered around Eris as usual: pushy Titans, curious Exos communicating in patterns of static and light, sociable Warlocks riffing off of Eris' poems.
Some of them recognized Amanda and nodded or waved at her. She replied in kind, and then the group dispersed, not all at once or in the same direction but close enough to being a coordinated effort that quite suddenly Amanda was alone with Eris and the aggressive, blocky lines of her jumpship.
Amanda drew out the crumpled, folded cloth. "I have extra," she said. "It's recycled or foraged cloth, not as rough as the kind used in shirts. There isn't enough to make full bolts, so the good stuff goes to cleaning engines."
Eris took one hand out from under her captive ball of Light. When she took the cloth, Amanda expected to feel some sort of heat residue on her skin, but there was no output or change. Her skin was warm like a human's, not cool like an Awoken's. Eris looked down at the red scrap. Its edges were ragged, its green and white weave almost faded into the deep red.
"You're right."
"About what?"
"My eyes are mechanical. They need oil, and lose it easily. Thank you for your gift, Holliday."
Behind her, the tethered ship hummed. Amanda was tempted to say something curious, to inquire as to how Eris got her hidden eyes, but now was not the time. "Thank you for coming back to us," she said, instead.
Eris looked like she was going to say more, like she was going to question the definition of thanks or 'us' or coming back. Maybe it was a riddle on her lips, a foggy pronouncement from a wounded mind. Eris made the cloth disappear like a sideshow magician, the Light lingering on her fingers. Amanda thought the gesture reinforced the fact that she herself was not a Guardian, would not be able to laugh at tricks that sundered the universe. This had never worried her, though. Someone had to be the support. Someone had to remain unstuck in time.